I am 1.78 metres (5ft 10in) tall, and hover between a UK size six and eight. And the first thing you may think when you look at a picture of me is, “Gosh, you’re pretty!” The first thing I think is: “Would I like a sandwich?”

I’m a human woman, I cannot miraculously shave my hip bones down, just to fit into a sample size piece of clothing.

Awareness of the extreme thinness required of models has been growing for years, as have the objections to the cultural fetishisation of bones and hunger, instead of health and happiness, for women. Now, normally when a backlash starts against an advertising trend – which is in all important respects what model-thinness is, albeit more enduring and hegemonic than most – advertisers retreat. They take stock. Which is to say, they look at where consumers’ money is going – and they respond accordingly.

But the lack of change in this area suggests consumers are not changing their spending habits. And as most of the consumers of the brands and products these advertisers are selling to are women purporting to hate this kind of thing, we have a conundrum: why are we still doing this? Why aren’t we putting our money where our mouths are? And then, obviously, in further solidarity taking our mouths off for a pizza somewhere?

It seems that in the great fight against narrow beauty ideals we’ve gone only as far as lip service. We know what we see is wrong on multiple levels, but you can’t undo years of conditioning overnight. Enculturation starts at birth, and images work at a visceral level. You learn what your society’s beauty is long before you acquire – if you ever do – the tools to criticise and deconstruct it. Within the gap grow unhealthy aspirations.

For that, we need advertisers to break the vicious, and viciously effective, cycle that threatens to trap current and future generations of consumers, and start using “real” women – of healthy weights, and maybe slightly varying shapes – instead of those who are down to the bone.

Asking, or compelling by legislation, advertisers to do this runs counter to almost every prevailing ideology and trend. It asks that moneymaking ventures act for the greater good instead of the bottom line. It asks government to chip away at a cornerstone of the free market. It conceptualises women as hapless victims of intangible forces.

To the first two we can safely respond – yes, it does. Ideologies and trends are not immutable laws of physics; do it. To the last, I say – yes, that’s an uncomfortable thought, unless you accept that all human beings are hapless victims from time to time. It doesn’t mean any of us are stupid, or make us lesser beings. It means that when things go too far we all need a bit of protection, not just from one another but from ourselves. And starvation as the norm is always too far. So, let’s do it.

The fact that men are paid more than women for doing the same or similar job is well-known. Feminist organisations have campaigned to close this gap, and also to make it clear that women are not standing for it. One recent analysis estimated that at the current pace of change, the UK pay gap will not be eradicated until 2069.

Not only do men “do a lot less” for more pay, but feel entitled to more.

Men do a lot less and they are less demanding on themselves and their standards are lower, yet they feel entitled to ask for a raise or a promotion.

This will not surprise any woman who has seen her male counterparts spend an hour playing online poker before striding into the boss’s office and cockily asking for a pay rise. This is all fuel to the fire in our sexist culture. Women rarely feel good enough about themselves, and tend to feel under pressure to do more for less praise and fewer pounds. Whereas men can roll into the office looking like death in a carrier bag, women tend to be under pressure to look as fresh as a daisy.

I was once asked why lesbians always looked scruffy and overweight, which I interpreted as over a size 10 and devoid of make-up and heels. I explained that many heterosexual women would dress the same way if they did not feel the need to compensate for being, well, women in a man’s world, and that it was terrible that every part of the female form – from our hair to our toes – is up for a preen, paint, spray or squeeze. Men, even in today’s metrosexual culture, make far less effort, and yet seem to get away with it.

Celebrity men can be adored while wearing grubby shorts, scuffed trainers and hair sticking up at the crown, while women get the front page of Take a Break or Heat for going to the shops in trackies – and not in a good way. Men get younger models despite being over the hill, whereas women get pity and Netflix.

Even when it comes to poor performance in the sack, men enjoy affectionate, sympathetic portrayals in Hollywood films, for example, I Think I Love My Wife and Bonnie and Clyde, whereas directors portray their female counterparts as desperate, pathetic, frigid and often even psychotic.

Men who stay at home to look after kids, or turn up at the school gates, are seen as selfless gods.

When it comes to household chores, women’s time cleaning up children’s’ poo and vomit is not so much undervalued as dismissed altogether. But men who stay at home to look after kids, or turn up at the school gates, are seen as selfless gods. These days, after decades of feminism, men do more chores and childcare – but not much more, and still far less than women. According to research by the feminist writer Beatrix Campbell, over the past three decades, the time that men dedicated to childcare rose at a rate of about 30 seconds per day, per year. Their contribution to housework rose at a rate of one minute per day, per year.

My final point about men doing less and getting more money, praise (or both) is one most women are united on: men cooking. It is clear, watching men with their BBQ sets, or assembling a curry in the kitchen, that to them, cooking does not feel like “housework” in the way cleaning does. Let’s face it, if it did, they probably would not be so keen to wreck the kitchen or patio while wearing an apron adorned with a “dude with the food” slogan.

Feminists still have much left to do before we are even close to being liberated from the shackles of patriarchal privilege, and this is yet more unpaid work we women will have to undertake.

Last month a doctor was compelled to tell women not to put glitter pills inside their vaginas and once again I was reminded of Stephen Hawking’s prediction that humans are heading for extinction.

Passion Dust Intimacy Capsules are “small, sparkleised capsules that dissolve when inserted into the vagina and release the sweet sparkle that is Passion Dust”. Basically, you piss heaven.

They sold out immediately, hence gynaecologist Dr Jen Gunter explaining exactly how and why glitter has no place in the vagina. If her name sounds familiar, it’s perhaps because she is the person who has, breathing a sigh the size of Center Parcs, decided to take on Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, clarifying the problems with (among other things) their suggestions to steam your vagina before inserting jade eggs inside you for better sex.

Glitter, though. Is that what we want, after the candles are lit and the Baileys is drunk? It’s not for nothing that Ship Your Enemies Glitter (a company that sends an envelope of glitter through the post, to coat recipients in sparkling debris upon opening) is so popular. Anyway, post-vajazzle, it seems, glitter has migrated deeper into the curious woman, like a feminist metaphor gone rogue.

And this right at the moment we learn glitter itself is… problematic. Though delightful and star-like, glitter flakes are essentially flattened microbeads, a particle plastic banned in the USA and soon to be banned here, too. The size of microplastics allows them to be ingested by the tiniest of organisms, which poses huge problems for aquatic life and, consequently, us. Glitter has been harming some people already though, with a range of iPhone cases containing glitter suspended in liquid being recalled after reports of skin irritation and chemical burns. “One consumer reported permanent scarring from a chemical burn and another consumer reported chemical burns and swelling to her leg, face, neck, chest, upper body and hands,” wrote the US Consumer Product Safety Commission in its press release. Being me, this news took my one-track mind quickly jogging down its well-trod path of toxic femininity – a frilly argument about the inevitable injuries that result from princess culture, not including pay gaps. But it wasn’t satisfying. It left me wanting. Though associated often with girliness, today glitter is bigger than that. It covers everything. To the point that it’s considered one of the most effective forms of forensic evidence – it’s really, really difficult to wash away.

You get the sense, don’t you, that the whole world has been glitter-bombed by a sly, jealous enemy, with these rainbow shards quietly embedding themselves in every aspect of life, and, like sand after a holiday, we’ll find it for weeks after in the oddest places? The thing about glitter is that it is used to make dull things exciting. Which is why it’s been so easy to ignore its darker side. Have we always known glitter was a trick, a distraction? Have we known that and ignored it, and used it to our advantage? As well as covering up birthday card mistakes, we use it to decorate difficult things, like coming out in public, or being female.

Hence the success of Passion Dust, “The pretty little pill that makes you ‘magically delicious’”. Glitter turns an awkward encounter into a princess tea party, vaginal excretions into something safe and cartoonish that taste like Skittles. For all the horrors that vagina glitter implies, I sort of get it. I mean, I get why. I get it as a My Little Pony-flavoured attempt to make every inch of an unwieldy body perfect, to hold it at a distance in order to feel you have at least a little control. Which is not to say Passion Dust can’t produce vaginal wall granulomas, act as an irritant and cause vaginal contact dermatitis, damage the good vaginal bacteria leading to infections as well as in increased risk of STIs.

Women have caught up with men in the amount of alcohol they drink and are doing increasing amounts of damage to their health as a result, according to a global study that looked at the consumption habits of four million women over a period of over a century.

The change is partly the result of successful marketing campaigns and the creation of sweeter products aimed at young women or girls, as well as cuts in price, say health campaigners. Some studies have even suggested that younger women may be out-drinking men. Blushing with embarrassment.

This news has implications for the framing and targeting of alcohol use prevention and intervention programmes. Alcohol use and alcohol-use disorders have historically been viewed as a male phenomenon.

Historically, far more men drank alcohol than women. Men born between 1891 and 1910 were twice as likely as their female peers to drink alcohol and more than three times as likely to be involved in problematic use or use leading to harms. But in all three respects, this had almost reached parity among those born between 1991 and 2000.

Women’s drinking has increased for a number of reasons. Those who have succeeded in obtaining jobs that were once the preserve of men have joined – or found it necessary to become part of – the after-work drinking culture.

But drops in the price, which have led to wine and beer becoming regular items in the supermarket shopping trolley and part of everyday life at home, have also been a factor, alongside deliberate marketing targeted at women.

Since the 1950s we’ve seen women’s drinking continue to rise, and drinking at home has continued to increase and because alcohol is so cheap and easily available it’s become an everyday grocery item. We’ve also seen a concerted effort from the alcohol industry to market products and brands specifically to women.

We know from the annual Dry January campaign that people often don’t realise that alcohol has become a habit rather than a pleasure, with women having ‘wine o’clock’ most nights of the week. I know I do.

Drinking too much, too often, can store up future health problems, both mental and physical, with people not realising just how easy it is to go over recommended limits.

This is why we need mandatory health warnings on alcohol products and a mass media campaign to make sure the chief medical officer’s guidelines are widely known and understood. So always read the label before drinking.

Some of the drinks now available have been targeted at young women who “pre-load” while getting together to dress and do their make-up before a night out. Three large glasses of wine can be the equivalent of nine units.

Babycham was the first drink specifically designed with women in mind in post-war Britain. Today there are many others including Lambrini, which is aimed entirely at young women. “Sweet or fruity? Lively, smooth – or are you a classic kind of girl? With a Lambrini tailored to complement your own personal style and taste, you’re going to love our new collection!” says the advertising on its website.

Alcohol advertising and sponsorship is also noticeable in TV programmes aimed at women. For example, Baileys backed Desperate Housewives.

Women’s bodies do not tolerate alcohol as well as men’s, however, because they have a higher fat to water ratio. Because they have less water, the alcohol in their system remains more concentrated. They also have smaller livers than men, which makes it harder to process alcohol safely.

It’s absurd that this should be a startling turn of events in 2017, when superhero tentpoles and their multiple offshoots have a corporate stranglehold on mainstream film culture. Among this year’s premier multiplex attractions are the second complete reboot of the Spider-Man franchise in five years, a third solo outing for Thor, and the DC Comics convention that is Justice League; we’ve already had the third Wolverine film, itself the 10th title in the X-Men cinematic universe, another Guardians of the Galaxy romp, and even the playful brand-name merger of Batman and Lego. Superheroes, extraordinary beings in their respective narrative worlds, are in disenchantingly excessive supply in ours; another man in a cape is no cause for head-turning. But a woman? In the foreground of the picture? Named in the very title of the movie? What is this brave new world?

Look around the cinema at any average screening of a Batman or an X-Men film, and you’re sure to notice that the audience isn’t entirely, gruntingly male. Do the same at any blockbuster with a female hero – The Hunger Games, for one – and you’ll notice more than a few men in the mix. Certainly, enough red-blooded misogynists profess to care sufficiently about Wonder Woman to stamp their hairy feet over a proposed female-only screening. “Superheroes for all!” these men cry – and in that respect, if no other, we can agree. Superhero movies aren’t gender-exclusive in reach or appeal, so why the overwhelming representational bias on screen?

Because, by the same logic that greenlights any number of sequels, remakes and franchise extensions, Hollywood is an industry built on precedent, and over 30 years of sporadic attempts have, until now, failed to provide a working model of success for the female-fronted superhero film. We’re not talking about audiences staying away due to misunderstanding or mismarketing: in a genre of wildly yo-yoing quality, female superhero films have somehow been botched most consistently, scuppered by a collision of the wrong conception and the wrong talent.

Let’s rewind to 1983, when Superman III had been one the summer’s worst commercial under-performers, grossing a little over half its predecessor’s total in the US. The executive producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind decided the way to reanimate the franchise was to set the Man of Steel aside and focus on his young cousin Kara Zor-El – first introduced by DC Comics in 1959. Supergirl was never the most liberally conceived of characters: her very outfit cemented the idea that she was “Superman in a skirt”, and her powers and responsibilities scarcely distinguished her from her brawnier relative.

And the calamitous 1984 film that followed barely gave her a chance. The Superman III director, Richard Lester, had been sought, but refused; Jeannot Szwarc of France, then best known for the dubious Jaws 2, was secured. The producers wanted red-hot Brooke Shields for the lead; Szwarc preferred the blank-slate newcomer Helen Slater. Christopher Reeve opted out of an initially mooted cameo; Superman’s absence was hastily explained in a narrative heavy on sketchy shortcuts and logical leaps. Connoisseurs of camp relished the hamming of Peter O’Toole and Faye Dunaway in the roles of grizzled mentor and villain, respectively – though not, perhaps, half as much as they would have done had Dolly Parton taken Dunaway’s role as initially proposed. Either way, the camp crowd cannot mint a blockbuster. Baffled by the ropey script and chintzy production, audiences stayed away to the tune of $14m – less than a quarter of Superman III’s gross.

That was enough to put the female hero experiment on ice: in the wake of the film’s failure, the Salkinds sold on the franchise, and Christopher Reeve stepped back into the blue Spandex for 1987’s dismal Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

Despite the success of Michelle Pfeiffer’s slinky, modernised take on Catwoman as a supporting figure in Tim Burton’s 1992 Batman Returns, studios weren’t tempted to try out another female superhero vehicle until the mid-1990s – by which time the growing cult following for Supergirl had perhaps convinced producers that the best way to sell audiences on a female hero was with tongue lodged firmly in cheek. Released in 1995 and 1996 respectively, Tank Girl and Barb Wire had very different ideas of camp. The former, based on a punk-inspired British cult comic from the late 1980s, was deliberately fashioned as anarchic, independent-spirited pop-trash; the latter, taken from a then new Dark Horse Comics series, was outright leatherette junk, lacking enough irony to pull off the barely masked Casablanca rip-off of its plot.

Directed by a woman, the promising horror upstart Rachel Talalay, with Lori Petty bringing spiky riot-grrrl energy to the title role – a rebellious antihero fighting corporations in drought-ravaged, dystopian Australia – Tank Girl had a quasi-feminist spirit designed to bring young women to the cinema. If the anonymously male-directed Barb Wire appealed to anyone, meanwhile, it was the teenage boys with posters of Pamela Anderson on their walls. A buxom bounty hunter also managing a nightclub in the midst of the “second American civil war” of 2017 – so there’s still time for Donald Trump to prove it an improbably prescient film – the eponymous Barb punishes men for sexualising her, though the film-makers and Anderson’s blank, breathy performance did little but. Whatever the integrity of each film’s girl power, neither connected with audiences, grossing less than $10m between them.

And there largely ended the idea of the offbeat, independently originated female superhero on screen. A decade later, big studios went back to the idea of spinoffs from male-led franchises. By 2004 – a year before Christopher Nolan sternly reinvigorated the Dark Knight – the Batman well had run sufficiently dry that Warner Bros took a punt on a solo Catwoman feature. Sadly, Halle Berry was fashioned into a declawed version of the character, a far cry from Pfeiffer’s complex femme fatale. Directed by the mononymous French effects whiz Pitof and almost entirely divorced from the Batman universe, it was a turgid, half-heartedly jape-y affair, torn between Catwoman’s feline kink and newly earnest solo crime-fighting agenda. No one bought it, and the film failed to recoup its $100m budget.

Six months later, Fox tried its luck with Elektra, having already test-run Jennifer Garner as the martial arts-trained assassin in 2003’s profitable Daredevil adaptation. (She had died at the end of it, but you can’t keep a good – or even a strictly average – superheroine down.) Without the anchoring attraction of Ben Affleck shrink-wrapped in red leather, however, audiences just weren’t interested: released in the infamous commercial dead zone of January, Elektra suffered a swift power cut.

By then, the present age of comic-book movie monoliths was well under way: Spider-Man had become a pop culture colossus again, with Batman (and, with slightly less golden results, Superman) shortly to follow. Studios were pouring millions into glossily redesigning well-known quantities, and getting mega-millions back in return. Their motivation to experiment with new or unproven superhero franchises – like, say, anything starring a woman – couldn’t have been lower.

And so, superheroines were instead successfully slotted into ensembles. Jessica Alba played Invisible Woman (the irony!) in The Fantastic Four. Anne Hathaway clawed back some of Catwoman’s cred in Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. The Avengers and its Marvel Cinematic Universe associates have provided auspicious showcases for Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), while the X-Men series keeps throwing bones to the likes of Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Halle Berry (Storm) and Anna Paquin (Rogue).

Yet as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to mushroom across solo vehicles for superheroes such as Thor and Captain America, Black Widow is kept waiting – with Johansson turning instead to the manga of Ghost in the Shell for a comic-book lead. Lawrence has grown into one of Hollywood’s most bankable names, yet a Mystique movie hasn’t materialised while Fox makes a solo cash cow out of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.

Now Wonder Woman – directed by the long-languishing Patty Jenkins, once booted from Thor: The Dark World and now only the second female film-maker to be given a $100m-plus budget — arrives with a lot riding on her strong, bronzed shoulders. If it lands, could studios be inspired to give the spotlight to a few more ladies in the comic-book canon? Two are already taking a punt, with the Avengers architect Joss Whedon recruited by Warner Bros to give Batgirl (last spotted in the chaotic mix of 1997’s Batman & Robin) an ass-kicking vehicle of her own and Brie Larson joining the MCU to play Captain Marvel. Could Supergirl be far behind, to get her own shot at big-screen redemption? It’s certainly time. For as much as Hollywood would have us believe otherwise, saving the world – and wearing lycra while doing so – is an equal-opportunity skill.

It’s just a guess, but an answer might be that the magazine’s publishers let that happen. But that would surely worry them that thin women wouldn’t buy their mags.

There is a grudging place reserved for ‘normal’ women who somehow still want a bikini for the beach, but those ‘normal’ women are still expected to do the decent thing and disappear. No wonder so many women hesitate over the holiday packing, wondering whether they can still get away with a bikini. When they can.

Designers have been warned that, by making clothes in impossibly small sample sizes, they were driving models to become ridiculously thin for women like me who are quite ‘normal’.

But it reveals much about that industry that even mild deviations from a rigidly policed ideal of beauty – young, skinny, white, impossibly beautiful – are considered commercially risky. Fashion sales essentially rely on convincing us that there is a “right” way for women to look, and that the 99% who don’t resemble the model can get there for the price of the dress she’s wearing. Relax the definition of perfect, accept that more women are fine as they are, and who needs the dress?

The pragmatic reason for using impossibly attractive models, however attractiveness is defined, is meanwhile, as Boden’s eponymous founder Johnnie Boden once put it, that “you can’t hold up a mirror to customers. If you make it too real, it becomes mumsy.” Put a normal woman in a bikini and it’s obvious how little of the magic is down to the clothes, how hard magazines have to work just to make them look interesting. Some bikinis are prettier than others, but it’s just something you wear to go swimming. There’s only so much a few triangles of cloth can achieve.

And it’s your life, not wardrobe, that creates the real interest in you in which the clothes look less interesting than the person inside them. Hurrah, at least, for that.

How, I sometimes wonder, will future generations look back on our era? I imagine there will be Ye Olde Early 21st-Centurie Tours, during which school children will be dragged down recreated pavement streets, dotted with Costa Coffees, Caffe Neros and, the non-plus ultra, Starbucks as they learn about “The Great Coffee Craze” suffered by their ancestors. And they will gaze upon these model stores with the same bemusement with which we look upon tales of leeching and the bubonic plague. Perhaps, too, they’ll learn how these ancestors valued familiarity over variety, preferring their lunches to taste the same wherever they travelled and relying on things called “sandwich chain stores” so they could be assured that the brie and tomato baguette they had in Pret a Manger in Rotherham one week would taste exactly the same as the one they had in Edinburgh the next.

But something else has come to my attention that evokes a certain aspect of this modern era even better than convoluted coffees in infantalising sippy cups. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons released its latest statistics for procedures this week and reading them is like flicking through a copy of Grazia magazine without the risk of encountering any celebrity selfies or the phrase “bikini body”. For herein we see the obsession with the female body in the most brutally exaggerated form, divested of any euphemisms of the “maintenance” and “tightening” variety, as employed by the former MP Louise Mensch when discussing her facelift on Newsnight. (“I was asked about [my facelift] by the Guardian once and refused to answer as journalists are always trying to trivialise female politicians by talking about their appearances,” said Mensch, who was in no way trivialising herself by talking about her facelift to Jeremy Paxman.)

While it may not have the literary merit of Wolf Hall, there is plenty to occupy one in the 2012 Plastic Surgery Report, such as its use of exclamation marks (“2012 marked the highest number of botulinum toxin type A injections, with 61.m injections!”) and the identical image of the apparently naked woman on every page, suggesting that – as most of us always believed – the ultimate effect of plastic surgery is to make all women look robotic and identical (in 2012 in America, women accounted for 91% of plastic surgery procedures).

But the page I find the most enthralling is the one detailing which procedures have moved up and down the charts, pop-pickers, because it’s here that we really see what’s happening in the world of female body fixations. For example, forehead lifts are down from 2000 by 63%, helped, no doubt, by the rise of Botox, which has increased by 680%. Breast lifts and buttock lifts are (appropriately) up 69% and 114% respectively since 2000, reflecting the trend for certain parts of a woman to be higher and tighter. Once changing from stripes to polka dots marked the changing years in a woman’s wardrobe; now it’s where her body parts are on her body.

While the most popular surgical procedure remains, unsurprisingly, breast augmentations, these have fallen in America over the past year by 7%. By contrast, upper arm lifts are up 4,473% since 2000, and this – while staggering – is no surprise.

In case you have missed the memo, upper arms are the new trophy female body part and not boobs, the one that signifies a dedication to the cause (the cause of having a trophy female body part) and belonging to a certain class, because class is always at the root of this kind of boggle-eyed female body fetishisation. So while New York Magazine was quick to claim that “Michelle Obama’s Arms Spark Liposuction Trend”, their accusation is misjudged. Only those of a certain class have the time and money to do what is required to maintain those toned arms without recourse to slicing them open from pit to elbow, as Anna Wintour (daily 6am tennis practice) and Gwyneth Paltrow (has she mentioned she exercises?) can affirm. (Those women and others such as Jennifer Aniston almost invariably wear sleeveless dresses, even on winter nights, for what is the point of having a trophy body part if it’s covered up? Cardigans are for flabby-armed wimps.) That, you see, is kind of the point of the trophy female body part, and why it constantly changes: it has to be something only the very few can attain, and this is also why the arm will soon no longer be the trophy part as more people attain theirs through surgical means.

So what next, female trophy body part hunters, what next? My money’s on “an enviable back”, followed by a rise in “back lipo”. Trying to spot the next trophy female body part is like playing whack-a-mole on a woman’s body, and it’s a lot more painful for the woman than it was for the mole. Since spending time in LA during Oscars season, I thought I’d heard of all possible forms of plastic surgery, ranging from toe-shortening (can’t have talons crawling out of your Jimmy Choos) to lip lifting (for that crucial Joker look). But as even the most casual reader of the Mail Online’s sidebar of shame will know, there is an inexhaustible number of body parts for which a woman can be criticised (“What is wrong with Zooey Deschanel’s eyelid?” Mail Online, 12 March).

Ultimately this isn’t about plastic surgery – it’s about what part of the female body will be fetishised next and used to make other women resent the body parts they have. And if some of them feel driven to carve up their skin and muscle in order to fit some kind of bill, well, that’s not self-loathing – that’s just the modern way.